According to Greenpeace office head in St. Petersburg Dmitry Artamonov the activists granted bail would be likely released on November 21

ST. PETERSBURG, November 20. /ITAR-TASS/. Officials of Greenpeace environmental campaign group planned on Wednesday to transfer money for 12 activists granted bail following their September arrest for storming the Russian Arctic oil rig.

“We hope that today the money will be transferred,” Greenpeace office head in St. Petersburg Dmitry Artamonov said, explaining that information about the receiving account was still awaited.

Only technicalities and certain formalities remained to be settled for the prisoners to be freed, Artamonov noted, adding that the chance for their release on Wednesday was vague. Most probably, the activists granted bail would be released on November 21, he said.

St. Petersburg’s Kalininsky and Primorsky district courts ruled on November 18 and November 19 to release the activists each on bail of two million rubles.

They are photographer Denis Sinyakov; Yekaterina Zaspa, a Russian medical technician on Arctic Sunrise ship; spokesman for the Greenpeace office in Russia Andrei Allakhverdov; New Zealander David Haussmann; Ana Paula Alminhana Maciel of Brazil; Tomasz Dziemianczuk of Poland; Paul Ruzycki of Canada; Cristian D'Alessandro of Italy; Francesco Pisanu of France; Sini Saarela of Finland; Miguel Hernan Perez Orzi and Camila Speziale, both of Argentina. They will be freed when bail is paid.

The protesters were detained on September 18 when trying to storm the Prirazlomnaya rig from aboard the Arctic Sunrise. Their ship was towed to the port of Murmansk in northern Russia. In October, the Russian Investigative Committee dropped piracy charges against the group, replacing alleged piracy with an accusation of hooliganism.